In treating patients in hospitals, the medicines, blood, and the like, to be administered to a particular patient are made up at a location in the hospital which is remote from the patient. This medication is identified as to the patient who is to receive it by attaching thereto a card which is embossed with the name and admission number of the patient, and it is delivered to the floor nurse who is to administer said medication to the patient. The patient is provided with an identification card embossed with the identical information of name and admission number, and this card may be hung on a string around the patient's neck. The nurse then compares the card on the medicine package with the card around the neck of the patient by visually inspecting both cards. If both cards match, she knows that this particular medicine is intended for this particular patient and proceeds to administer it.
This system has the advantage of matching the correct medicine, blood, and the like with the intended patient, even though the patient may not be able to respond to questions by the nurse because of the patient being unconscience or otherwise incapacitated.
However, this system is subject to error if, for example, two patients are in the same hospital and have the same name, or names which appear very similar with perhaps only one letter in the names being different. Of course, in such cases of the same or similar names, the different admission numbers given to the patient should serve to distinguish one patient from the other. However, such numbers may be very similar and may have just the last two numbers transposed, for example. On occasions in the past, such similarities of names and numbers have caused confusion that resulted in the wrong patient being given the wrong type of blood or medicine, and such mistakes have caused death or serious harm to the patients.